Unless it is a busy October weekend, then I do a ten minute quick show in the first room, in which I try to get their attention, inform them entertain them, make them giggle, smirk or laugh and possibly also get a fearfull reaction from some or all of them,all this in 10 to 12 minutes.
We often ask first thing if they are on a time consideration? When I forget to ask this I try to get a read on how they are liking what I am doing for them but could still get in trouble if they too lose all sense of time and are late getting out of here and have to drive 2 or 3 hours to get back home.
It does take some time to get into most people's minds to entertain them.
It takes time to communicate with them to convice them that you are... goingm to be doing or not doing certain things, hopefully up to their expectations, since they paid for whatever is coming up next.
Their bodies are also kept somewhat busy here for the duration of the house tour to traverse almost half a mile of foot travel here, all while never leaving a 125 ft. by 75 ft. property.. physically anyway.
If someone needs a "quick" show , I can get them through in 60 minutes, of course they have to do their part too, can't be asking lots of questions and stopping to gawk or read the scribblings upon every foot of maze wall, you know.

This is a subjective question as it has everythign to do with the size of the haunt and the pricing. As previously stated you don't want to overcharge. Typically I aim at 20 minutes but I will NEVER sacrifice quality for more time. [B]Any haunter that sacrifices the quality of his/her haunt will ultimately damage the entire industry![/B] I relate it to this; if you go to a fast food chain place and your food sucks and the service was horrible, are you going to want to go to another one of their chains? Probably not!

The key is to give a great show with adequate time. Of course if we had all the money in the world we could do this easily so don't go broke trying.

There is no magical number of minutes or time line. Besides when you get closer to Halloween your numbers will spike and you will more than likely have a straight line through your haunt. Then it becomes an issue of traffic flow...

I feel 20-30 minutes is ideal. Sometimes I feel you get what you pay for at some haunts you pay $10 and its a 10 minute walk. Others charge 15-20 and have a 30-40 haunt. Take Headless they have 8 attractions and it takes 2.5-3 hrs to complete the entire attraction. Per attraction some are a very quick walk through like the greenhouse and cellar but the Haunted Houses, cornfield, hayride are long. It is the best for your money and they do an excellent job.

It is not always about time but about "depth of experience" If you have an endless maze where everything feels the same it might not be as good as something shorter where many different things happen. a huge variety of different experiences is worth "clock time" or Sq footage any day.

I didn't want to start a new thread when such a closely related one was already here. I hope some of you guys are still reading / keeping up with this. I need some opinions.

I have a 2 trailer haunt that should take about 6 min's to get through (estimation) We're trying to project the average length of time to get from front door to the first room (2 small dark mazes etc) all the way down to how long we're going to tortue folks etc.

If a show is only 6 minutes average, BUT!... You involve them SO MUCH, they are literally part of the show. It'll be hands on w/o freaking people out. We're going to kidnap people without grabbing and dragging them etc. 3 of the 5/6 group will get hands on experiences from being kidnapped and tortured, to being part of a really cool illusion / scare.

If they REALLY get a great show for 6 minutes, what kind of price should we look at? We expect to have folks come out going 'WOW, that was so cool'. And what we're trying to do, is give them 'talk' materials, like the one who gets kidnapped, will have to tell the rest of the group later what she experienced in the hallways and torture table, and the ones in the illusions get to tell how it's done.

So... opinions on pricing? Should I stick with the dollar per minute plan? Or I have a few people saying $8 sounds good.

Let me just say this... there are a lot of haunters out there that TOTALLY LIE or TOTALLY EMBELLISH the truth about how long it takes to walk through their haunt. Creepyworld is MASSIVE and I mean MASSIVE... if you ever get the chance to come during October you should just to see Creepyworld. Creepyworld is totally awesome and its long as hell... if I started at the beginning and just walked the whole thing with no one there it might take me about 15 minutes. Anyone should be able to walk a mile in 10 minutes or run one in 7 or 8 minutes. So tell me is your haunted house a mile long?

There is 1 Mile = 5280 Feet. How many haunted houses are 5280 walking feet? UMMMM not many if ANY!

So if you can walk a mile in 10 minutes, even if your haunt was TWO miles long its still under 20 minutes long. So lets get real for a second...

If you want to add in all the time they wait in a long line, or slowing down because they are scared, or whatever it still couldn't take more than 15 minutes for the average haunted house at best!!!!!!!!!!!!

If your haunt is TOUR driven then sure it could take as long as you want it to... but you would never make a dime because you couldn't put any huge numbers through the place.

So the bottom line is this... Most haunts in America realistically are LESS THAN 10 minutes long. Lets just call a spade a spade...

Now if you want to add in everything that goes along with your experience sure it could be a lot longer but to answer your question lets go back to what I already said...

How long does it take a NORMAL person to walk a mile??? Lets just say a nice pace puts you at 10 minutes for every 5,280 feet. Most haunted houses are NOT that long... I would actually say HALF of that so that is FIVE minutes! Now add back in the time they take walking slow, or getting stopped maybe you get back to 10 or 12 minutes.

Larry just as a note a average person walks at a 4 MPH rate that would = 15 min mile and the the world record haunt right now is a little over 2600 feet long. but a person in a haunt walks below a 2 MPH pace, and yes i did check this with a pedometer.